Is It Safe for Skating?

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Thursday, January 26, 1911. Walked home from school with some girls who were going skating. I staid up later than usual tonight to get my lessons out. Did it because I had to. They weren’t hard, but they took some thinking.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Everyone’s life falls into a routine with one day being much like the next. For Grandma there was the repetitive routine of walking the mile and a half of so to and from school each day. Some days the road was snowy–others it was muddy. She’s probably wearing a coat and long skirt. And her shoes are probably encased in the new rubbers (low rubber boots that are pulled on over shoes) that she mentioned on the 19th.

The walk probably seemed long—and cold. Having other girls accompany her home apparently was a nice change in routine. This post continues to suggest that some of the best skating in the area was on the creek near the Muffly farm.

I’m surprised that the creek was frozen enough to skate on. Rain and mud are mentioned several times in the January diary entries. For example, on January 24—just two days before this entry— Grandma wrote, “It’s getting so terribly muddy.”

Did Grandma join the others and skate?—or did she just continue on home? Maybe she needed to milk the cows or do other farm chores –though she has not mentioned that she does any farm chores so far in the diary.